Social Justice in Schools - Page 8 - OG Myth-Weavers

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Social Justice in Schools

 
But you can't teach them empathy, or the intrinsic value of another human being that doesn't directly interface with their own benefits. When you purport to 'teach' them pro-social behaviour, you are simply delineating actions that may not work out to their immediate benefit, which informs them accordingly; it will not stop them from uniformly exploiting others (and they will) to whatever extent they feel they can get away with.

And if others are "trained" to a universal morality of "treat everyone nicely" that also makes them more exploitable.

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Originally Posted by MonkWren View Post
Social justice means not seeking revenge, but seeking change. It means not holding grudges, but offering forgiveness. It means turning the other cheek. It means offering a helping hand. It means being kind to others, even when they are not kind in return. It means standing up for the oppressed, the downtrodden, the lowly, and championing them as human beings just like everyone else. You want your definition Lord Ben? There it is.
This falsely conflates two ideas. The first one is "treating everyone like a human being." which is human rights. The second one is basically the golden rule.
If you expand human rights to include a moral imperative to act (note that the golden rule is not passive, but a requirement to positive action) on every unfortunate inequality, you instantly demonise every person on the earth until they begin acting like Jesus.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gygaxphobia View Post
This falsely conflates two ideas. The first one is "treating everyone like a human being." which is human rights. The second one is basically the golden rule.
If you expand human rights to include a moral imperative to act (note that the golden rule is not passive, but a requirement to positive action) on every unfortunate inequality, you instantly demonise every person on the earth until they begin acting like Jesus.
You're assuming I demonize that don't follow these actions. I don't. I think they could stand to improve their behavior (just as I could stand to improve my own), but isn't that part of the point? We're unhappy with how people treat each other a significant part of the time, and we want that to change.

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Originally Posted by Gygaxphobia View Post
Well the problem with "the small community takes care of it's own" is that in this case you do not appear to have been one of the "own" or maybe even "the small community".

This kind of charity is very selective, and personal. It relies on the familiarity of knowing something virtuous or moral about the beneficiary. In my opinion that makes the charity far less virtuous than anonymous charity.
Agree.

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Originally Posted by Surrealistik View Post
Social justice in the sense of equality of opportunity, rights, and minimization of gross economic/quality of life disparities is about pretty universally understood, and only tends to be given creative, wildly divergent definitions/conceptions by political extremes and the lunatic fringe.
And unfortunately, this world creates a lot of lunatics. Why has the entire history of mankind been wrought with war? I mean sure, it's been known to create civlization, but that's only out of basically the need for families to look after one another. That is all.

Oh and
Quote:
Originally Posted by Agricolus View Post
True, canjo. Simple ethics, renamed 'social justice' for those who like their language couched and their jobs more important-sounding, are very important, and are part of what every parent, uncle, aunt, older sibling and grandparent should dispense through their everyday lives. Schools can help by reinforcing those BASIC ideals; but, for instance, teaching kids barely past the toddler age that gay diversity is important, when they barely know that heterosexual interests even exist, is brainwashing. Schools can help by working toward them, a bit at a time.
Pretty much this.

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I've always loved that people seem to fear that kindergarten classes are going to set aside time to teach kids about gays. It is so ludicrous that it seems like something out of an SNL skit.
True, but the act of it happening feels like a south park skit.

Quote:
Mr. Garrison: Okay, children, today we're going to talk about gay diversity.

Ike: Gay. What is gay.

Mr. Garrison: It's when two guys love one another.

Ike: Ew. Cooties.

Mr. Garrison: No, it's special.

Ike: *covers face* Ah. No. Ick.
Little kids have inappropriate emotional reactions all the time, and it's hard enough trying to reign in the baser stuff at a young age, and teaching them to read and get along with each other (the value of sharing; I remember having trouble with that one - a lot of kindergarteners do), then it is to teach them about compassion.

Cute, painfully non-threatening cartoon characters are designed entirely to help them learn compassion in the first place, by having compassion for those cartoon characters, helping them learn other things so they can develop opinions (yes, little kids are opinionated; maybe not as sophisticated, but definitely opinionated), and then through that refining their ability to have compassion through their opinions, learn the importance of other matters later on in life, have compassion for things that are more important, and so on. Ordinarily, teachers follow a well designed schedule (granted, the subject matter of these schedules is considered archaic at current, but that's a different issue).

For everything else, there's pediatricians - people who go to university/college to learn entirely about how to better understand effective, healthy child development.

So yeah. I mean, not to say that children aren't tenacious - just saying that most of them will ignore this social justice periodic regimen.

I mean the indian kid in the photo at that rally looks so bored out of his mind, that he's concerned. I had to laugh, despite myself (actually, that isn't despite myself at all... whatever).

Quote:
You're assuming I demonize that don't follow these actions. I don't. I think they could stand to improve their behavior (just as I could stand to improve my own), but isn't that part of the point? We're unhappy with how people treat each other a significant part of the time, and we want that to change.
Hahaha... a significant part of the time? We've been worrying about things like crime ever since cities first existed, I'd say.

No, crime didn't start till the Code of Hamurrabi, and cities had been arround for a while at that point. Before that it wasn't really crime, just annoying the designated ruler or his represenatives.

This isn't about crime, this is beyond criminal law into less tangible areas.

Potentially it can teach people to consider the value of fairness from a young age, potentially it could also ingrain self-loathing and guilt in a way not seen since touching yourself was called a sin.

Quote:
Originally Posted by silveroak View Post
i live in the middle of the US, but because I am wiccan I have found that community support in times of need, or even many times Jobs were simply not available to me because the community I was in simply did not tollerate that which was outside teh mainstream, so teh cute little protestant girl could have a fundraiser and get money for her knee operation but if i were dying of some curable dread disease there would be no money raised and people would shake ther heads and offer their remorse in such a way as to couch in some words about how it was earned or deserved for being different.

Social justice is the opposite of that.

In the end I had to move in order to have decent employment opportunities.
Don't expect some teacher with an idea to create a social revolution to change everything. It may not be your fault your american and originally lived in some skeezier part of america, but it takes a social revolution or at least the passing of a generation to change the outlook of beneficiaries for charities, etc.

The thing with this 'social justice' is that it just seems to be cutting teachers loose and letting them teach whatever social idea they like. If it was more accurate and organized and with less emotional weight behind it (which usually lends itself to snap judgements like Ie. All homophobes are automatically evil and contribute to the hitler quotient or whatever, and it isn't just because most of them are emotionally and socially constructed by their upbringing to be weirded out by super effeminate/unmasculine behaviors; if psychology and all of recorded history taught me anything), then I'd accept it, but it isn't. Right now, it feels like brainwashing.

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No, crime didn't start till the Code of Hamurrabi, and cities had been arround for a while at that point. Before that it wasn't really crime, just annoying the designated ruler or his represenatives.
Okay, well that's still something like 3500 years. Also, I imagine you would have been punished for annoying anyone - by the person, and also western europe did trial by combat and had this huge warrior culture until about the rennaissance.

Quote:
Potentially it can teach people to consider the value of fairness from a young age, potentially it could also ingrain self-loathing and guilt in a way not seen since touching yourself was called a sin.
I'm more concerned that showing a video of dead apes does nothing but create an intense amount of emotional leverage, and when there's high emotions, that only encourages snap judgement. Children basically learn not the values of rationale, but discover a group (their friends in class) that accept them for using snap judgement. So they carry that into later life, making snap judgements based on their own opinions, until they're taught otherwise by the laws of the universe (society itself; maybe even via some brutal humbling or bullying, if fate deems it), and the social justice stuff they learned earlier feels pointless to them, so they forget about it!

Another thing about highschool/middle school or even the latter grades of elementary school, is that if you are stuck up about anything (usually, your own opinions, because it served you well when you were younger), the humbling process can be quite nasty (it's just natural social feedback, when people think your ego is too big; having a high ego is by nature, an anti-social attribute, so strangers react negatively by instinct).

People tend to forget about bad stuff, and remember the good times. It's a brain coping mechanism. This happens even when you've seen a bad movie. Can you recall specific details of any bad movies you saw a few months back?




 

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